


His Eyes

by decaf_kitty



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War I, BAMF Hatake Kakashi, Inspired by The Great Gatsby, M/M, Parent Umino Iruka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26201854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decaf_kitty/pseuds/decaf_kitty
Summary: Oh, but Iruka was sober, so very sober. He ignored all drinks thrust into his hands by waiters, by strangers, by sultry-eyed hopefuls. The infinite champagne did not impress, nor did the Hollywood stars in their rainbow array of beaded dresses, nor the Wall Street executives in their black-tie tuxedos and polished shoes.It didn’t matter to him that he was a poor college professor amid such finery, nor that he was visibly scarred from the late war. He didn’t like the fireworks for their similarity to artillery blast and sound. The crowds reminded him of the trenches. He navigated them efficiently, moving up the marble-stone staircase in search of his mysterious God-awful neighbor.(A Historical AU inspired by The Great Gatsby with a positive ending? Why, yes!)
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 9
Kudos: 123





	His Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything of substance in 52 days, a little over 7 weeks, instead watching as the world reels in turmoil over rampant disease, social injustice, and political unrest. Struck low by writer's block, I've decided to indulge in my old passions: KakaIru, history, and dramatic love. 
> 
> I hope desperately that you are okay out there in the world. I have worried about you. My small, pained hope is that you might enjoy this story, that it might intrigue you for a moment or even warm your heart. It was very easy to write, which was relief, because I feared my writing days were done, stolen by worldly distress.
> 
> Be good to your fellow humans. Really, truly, be good to them. Always know I write for you. I've thought about you for weeks.
> 
> ____

He just wanted to meet his neighbor.

Instead he was thrown into a world unlike any he’d ever known.

Liquor literally flowed out of fountains – the Cupid statue poured Russian Vodka – the Venus, Mexican Tequila – the Bacchus, Caribbean Rum. Each had its multitude of worshippers, beautiful men and women draped across the stone, drunk off their asses and laughing at jokes barely heard or ones not even said. The War was distant, a memory only for the dead, a never-thing, a it-happened-elsewhere-to-someone-else. The music was manifold, from upstairs a full orchestra, from the lawn a New Orleans jazz band flown in, from the grand foyer where he passed an opera singer buzzed and competing in a duet with a Portuguese pianist. Everyone there was dancing, some full-tilt, others madly, many walking about with a jump in their step or a slow drunken sway.

Oh, but Iruka was sober, so very sober. He ignored all drinks thrust into his hands by waiters, by strangers, by sultry-eyed hopefuls. The infinite champagne did not impress, nor did the Hollywood stars in their rainbow array of beaded dresses, nor the Wall Street executives in their black-tie tuxedos and polished shoes. It didn’t matter to him that he was a poor college professor amid such finery, nor that he was visibly scarred from the late war. He didn’t like the fireworks for their similarity to artillery blast and sound. The crowds reminded him of the trenches. He navigated them efficiently, moving up the marble-stone staircase in search of his mysterious God-awful neighbor.

This had gone on too long! He needed to be alone this summer – in between semesters at university – oh, God, his book begged him to write it in such soft, aching, pleading words – _he felt such guilt._

He had to write. 

He just had to write. 

_Good God. God damn it. Please - let him write!_

He would find his new neighbor, the man said to have a beautiful face, the wealthy wicked thing who had purchased this monstrous mansion beside his little summer cottage rental. The two of them would talk, together they would work it out. Surely, there must be a compromise, something – God, anything. 

How could the man host such parties every night? Did Iruka really have to lock his doors every sunset to ward off lechers and wannabe lovers alike? Must it be a morning ritual to offer water to half-nude creatures in his garden every sunrise? Certainly not. After all, Iruka had his fill of horrors on the Front, and he wanted less of this, whatever this was. The past year, upon his return to university, his students had proven so frustrating, the whole lot of them having never served, all having been just a year or two too young. They didn’t understand his impatience, his frustration – they wanted to know his unit, the date he volunteered – where did he serve? Had he seen combat? He must have, everyone had, look at his scar! So what was it like? Were things as bad as they said? How was it in France? Surely, great things had been accomplished in the Great War, didn’t he agree?

Iruka wanted to scream at them that he’d seen good men die for nothing! Not a single damn thing.

He’d lost his student… his son. 

In the place of answers, he taught Classical Antiquity, he taught Herodotus and Pericles and Socrates. Blind to time and space, his students curved the arc of history to the present, talking about how the Archduke’s assassination was akin to Julius Caesar’s, comparing the collapse of the Roman Empire to Germany’s recent downfall. 

After a while, Iruka let his mind go white like snow, and he longed for summer.

A bit of warmth for the cold…

His most treasured student had vanished in the war. There was a void in his heart the shape of his son. Those missing blue eyes haunted Iruka wherever he went. There - the blue on a square of cloth tucked into the front pocket of a tuxedo. There - the blue of a laughing woman’s eyes. There - the blue in the glittery sapphire on a man’s class ring. 

There in the lake. There in the skies. There in his dreams.

There in his nightmares.

Naruto looking back from No Man’s Land, those big blue eyes lit up in fear and determination.

This summer was supposed to save him! He needed this. A break in time. A moment of respite. Yet his demons kept at his back, aiming for his heart. Their claws scratched at the scar he’d earned in defense of his student well before the war, and, oh, how freely he bled as he ran from monsters. 

Yet here and now he dodged another drunken grab at his thigh from dark-eyed short-statured infamous horse jockey, batted away a violinist’s flirtatious attempt to pull out his ponytail, and charged up the grandiose staircase, intent on finding his damned neighbor.

The effect of the party on Iruka was bad, worsening him like gangrene infecting a dirty wound. He found a corner to gather himself, but the damage was already done. This was too alike to the past. So many men, gone, and for what? Where had his son, his student gone? Never recovered as a corpse, but that was the case of so many soldiers in the War. Could he have survived? Why wouldn’t he have contacted…?

A shadow fell over Iruka. His facial scar ached like the shrapnel was sharp and newly entering his skin. Above him, a long thin creature stood in black, the color seemingly cascading upwards, like a river reversing course in a hurricane. His hair was silver like stolen French cutlery. His skin, so pale, too pale, bordering on sickly. But most of it was hidden behind black mourning material; only a square of his true expression showed, a warped echo of a white surrender flag on his flesh. A facial mask – a man cloaked behind dark cotton – his aura without color – his soul wrapped up and tightly hidden.

In the black suit, there was no light, but in the single visible eye, Iruka saw gunmetal grey glinting.

It was the eye of another soldier, a soldier better than him. 

An officer. 

Instinct drove him to stand and meet the man as his superior. Stiffening mechanically, Iruka almost rose his body to military attention, but he caught the ritual and cast it away like evil cruel thoughts. 

“Do you know the owner?” he asked, loud enough to be heard. His voice cracked on the last word. Humiliation suited him well in that moment. There he languished in threadbare professor clothes, so distinctly wrong for such a flamboyant party, where women sported diamonds and pearls worth more than his life’s salary. His spirit was not meant for this world, nor the summer rental, nor the trenches, and yet he had been at all three, dragged along by obligation, the weight of responsibility.

He didn’t care about the missing skin in his face, nor the gruesome absence of muscle by his spine.

But how could he live without his son…? This not knowing… was the answer life or death? Were there bones in the French trenches belonging to his boy? Or could Naruto still be out there, waiting for him, in dire need of his teacher, desperate for the guidance of his adopted father?

The long scream of artillery was loud, crashing into his eardrums, shaking his mind.

He had glanced away from the man, who now he realized was watching him with lion-like intensity. The stare was unfamiliar and painful in its power. It was the clinical eye of a doctor examining a head wound, deciding either surgery or Last Rites. Disgust flushed through Iruka like finding maggots in his breakfast porridge. Although he could tell the man wanted something, he stepped away, making his own choice to return to the summer cottage and drink himself under for the night.

The hand on his bicep was instant agony, reaching his bone marrow. Not so distant, the opera singer struck a high note to the amazed laughter of drunk fools. Champagne overflowed a nearby woman’s elegant glass as a young man tried to delight his dream for the evening. Red-haired red-beaded beauties started dancing at the top of the staircase, escalating the entertainment for those below. The crowd roared in applause as their steps harmonized the improvised opera with the Portuguese pianist playing in full revolutionary inspiration.

Iruka scowled at the black-clad officer and tried to take back his arm.

He’d never been merciless or vile, but he believed both in duty and his fellow man. This creature brutally holding him was no brother to him, just barbed wire imprisoning him, and he would not have it.

Then, over the cacophonous din of dancers and singers, the unscarred and the liquor-freed, it was said. Those wanted words, those needed words. He heard it. His eyes stayed on the man’s as the words soared through the air between them. They were only a few words, two short words, but - a single bullet had started the Great War and killed tens of millions. So too could two words alter Iruka’s life and shift the very trajectory of his existence. He grabbed at the words as hard as the man held his arm, wanting them deep inside his broken heart, desiring them to repair his shattered soul.

“He’s alive.”

It was not weeping – no, Iruka would not do that in public!

Still, he knew his eyes watered, not because the world went wavy all at once, which it did, but because the black-painted officer, the one with the dangerous words – he stiffened and stared back at him in surprise.

Then Iruka was forcibly brought across the party, past soon-to-be lovers and alcohol-drenched disasters, his only view the back of the stunning thing’s black tuxedo. His eyes fixed on the man’s nape, where the silver hairs laid light and slight like sunbeams. Their hands were pressed together, his own sweaty and weak and shaking, the stranger’s cold and calloused but insistent and relentless. 

They were in a library, the ceilings reaching up high to the Heavens. The books included those both ancient and new, their covers ranging from dusty-deteriorating to pristine-untouched. A black grand piano sat lonely in the corner, its lid lifted, its delicate yet powerful insides exposed. In the center, a Victorian birch loveseat, its upholstery a blood-red velvet, looking stiff and unloved.

No one was in the room – no one but them.

He found himself against the wall of books by the piano, grappling with the single-eyed officer. The man was not struggling with Iruka, just fending off his fingers when he became too violent. Yet Iruka could not control his actions: he felt skeletal, digging out of his own grave, anxious to return to the land of the living. His own words failed him so spectacularly, he had no idea how he’d ever taught a single student even one little lesson.

But the dark-clad man seemed unperturbed by Iruka’s desperation. 

Eventually the panic-thrill fell out of him, and Iruka collapsed on his newfound savior. His scarred face crushed against the stranger’s chest, and soon he could hear the man’s heart. The beat was markedly slower than Iruka’s by a thousand miles. Its strength and stability anchored him; Iruka took it into himself, the surety of the officer’s heartbeat, its militarily precise drumroll.

At some point, he glanced up, faintly embarrassed.

The whisper spilled from him like wine into a delicate glass. 

“How do you know?”

That one eye – grey, stormy – lit bright like lightning. One silver brow arched beautifully, its partner unseen under black cloth. Even with his mouth covered, the outline of his lips showed he was speaking, but Iruka could feel the man’s ribcage adjust to his announcement, they were still so close.

“I am his –” the man began, then cut off like a shout from a soldier suddenly struck in the throat. The next pause seemed crystalline and fragile. With it, Iruka reconsidered the figure before him, realizing scars could be easily hidden away by cloth and a cool demeanor. 

Sorry darkness rolled through the man’s visible eye. His shoulders pulled back and down, shedding Iruka’s embrace easy and neutral. Even with their bodies apart, his gaze nevertheless kept on Iruka’s expression. A moment later, he’d totally recollected himself as if he’d picked up a hundred shards of glass smashed across the floor. 

“I was his captain.”

Unbidden, the start of Walt Whitman’s death poem fluttered by – 

_O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done._

Staring at the man, Iruka’s voice went rough as he asked needfully, “Where is he?”

Their shared look stayed isolated from the sounds of delight outside the library. The moment hung so heavy, Iruka felt like suffocating, but his throat could fill with blood for all he cared. His hands clutched at the man’s chest; he was utterly unmindful of how overly familiar his touch was. 

He would not lose this. 

Seemingly struck by Iruka’s intensity, the man delayed in answering. He appeared a bit thrown by their interaction, his stance unsteady, his single eye sparkling again. Wicked wonder passed, and then Iruka realized his hands were once more pressed into the stranger’s, now held stable between them. 

“My… protégé found him,” the man clarified carefully as he grasped Iruka’s palms. “They both served under me, but I lost your boy in Amiens. The Hundred Days took all our attention. His friend, my… ward, sought him out at war’s end. He found Uzumaki at a base hospital in the rear.”

For reasons unknown, the man leaned forward so much, their noses nearly touched. Where Iruka’s was bare, open, and scarred from war, the officer’s was black-covered, the cloth straining its threads.

“Your boy was struck in the head: he has amnesia, he’s been in recovery.”

Iruka was aghast, his heart rent open. Naruto – not remembering him? How could that be? Fear slithered up his spine like a serpent… perhaps he was forgettable, his impact little to nothing? After all, Naruto had rushed ahead, joined up before Iruka, and then was taken by the horrors of war. 

But no, there were days at university, with Naruto laughing, his blue eyes bright, his grin brilliant. The evenings at home as the two of them struggled to cook meals and finally went out for dinner. The nights when he’d catch Naruto working on basic lessons by candlelight, blonde brow furrowed.

His son. Still alive.

Iruka recognized he was again weeping, because the man breathed out with a tremble of his own, noticeably moved by his sudden tears. The stranger’s subsequent words swung over him, not sinking down to Earth, not at first, not at all. 

“It’s been a year since Uzumaki was located. I’ve been searching for you all this time.”

Confusion burned up through him, and he shook his head, displeased with the sensation. “What do you mean?” he asked right away, without stopping to process anything. “Why didn’t you look me up? Naruto could have –”

The insanity of reality struck a second later, causing Iruka to stop speaking, his mouth still open. 

“He doesn’t know your name,” the captain said, his nails digging into Iruka’s skin, as if trying to keep him from numbing out of this world. “He doesn’t know mine either, nor anything except –” This pause was more dramatic and even more unwanted. Iruka resisted the urge to scratch out the man’s visible eyeball he was so furious and heart-broken and horrified. “He knows Sasuke, my protégé. They’re together now, but he can’t be moved. I came to the States in search of you.”

Then, very deliberately, the officer looked down at Iruka’s scar, the one on his face. His lone-eyed gaze was strange in its fictional carelessness: it was obvious that he had been seeking this particular scar.

“Naruto drew you.”

Iruka stared back at the man – and then he found himself laughing, dark humor overtaking him. The act was so surprising that the captain dropped his hands, uncertain what the meaning of it was. But it was nothing so ill as a moment ago, because oh, of course Naruto could _try_ drawing Iruka, but he certainly couldn’t do it very well, since the boy was a miserable student and a worse artist, no matter how he tried. Still, _he tried,_ and that had warmed Iruka’s heart like summer days by the lake, so…

He smiled through his tears up at the officer overdressed in black. 

“Did he put me in a collared shirt or an Army uniform?” he asked, amused, half-dissolved.

“Ah, he –” the captain started, then looked at Iruka curiously, impressed by the difference in mood, before he continued, “He drew several pictures of you in a variety of places – a garden, a kitchen, a classroom. We realized you must be his father, but he couldn’t articulate more than one other thing about you…”

The emotional atmosphere was doing starlight supernova tricks on Iruka, and the man, too. A new fascinating change was conquering the captain: his black-clothed throat bobbed as he studied Iruka’s figure in his pathetic professor attire. Then up across the length of his facial scar. Then deep in his watery, thrilled, relieved dark eyes. 

The captain’s words were more whispered when he next spoke, like he was reverent and awed. 

“Your eyes – they made him feel alive.”

Iruka found _himself_ staring, surprised by the wonder in the officer’s barely visible expression. He’d never had anyone look at him like this man was, but he could identify the emotion, the thought. 

The admission was as soft as snow melting.

“I’ve been looking for a man with a scar like yours – and eyes that inspire – and here you are.”

The very idea that Iruka had been painfully seeking his son in the faces of strangers in crowds – that there was a man entirely unknown to him, searching desperately for him at the same time – it was beyond peculiar. To think they had found each other here…

It startled Iruka! He stepped forward, unthinking, jostling the captain out of his worshipful stupor. “Do you know the mansion’s owner? We should thank him for bringing us together! Without him, we couldn’t have met.” His mind was running like an out-of-control locomotive, burning coal, spitting steam. Thoughtless in his passion, Iruka reached over and tapped the man’s chest twice. “You deserve all the world’s praise for what you’ve done, but first, we should –”

“I own the house.”

Iruka’s head spun he moved so fast to look up at that single grey eye. He blinked, flummoxed. “What do you mean?” he asked, his eyebrows bunching together. “This is my neighbor’s house. He throws these damn parties every night, attracting all the city, half of the country’s elite. You’re not –”

But the captain was quite serious as he watched Iruka, to the extent that it was stupidly obvious just what was happening here, what had happened. However, in excruciating illumination, the man gestured with one hand at the tall library shelves around them and his other hand at the piano.

“This is my house. I bought it to find you.”

Iruka felt struck by shrapnel once again. He stared so intensely that he could see into the captain’s mind. “Me?” he wondered aloud. All his thoughts faded like sunshine bleaching bones as the man nodded in silent response. “How could you… this must cost millions.” Flustered to his core, Iruka felt his scarred cheeks heating, the flush broken by the long mark in his skin. “I’m not worth that.”

“No,” the black-suited officer replied. “You’re worth more.”

His blush went wild and theatrical like a Bird of Paradise in Papua New Guinea. “I’m not,” Iruka whispered, but he saw it in that one grey eye, how he was seen by this captain, this military hero. 

The man was gazing at him as if he’d found a Pharaoh’s treasure in Egypt. 

The gesture was so unexpected, Iruka nearly lost what was left of his coherence. Yet the captain meant his movements very much as he brought Iruka’s hand to his masked mouth – and then pulled the cloth down so he could properly kiss Iruka’s knuckles with bare lips.

It was a sign of loyal service. 

Fidelity. 

Devotion. 

Looking up past the kiss on his hand, Iruka saw what the dark-dressed man had been hiding away. The lower right part of the officer’s face was dominated by several twisted scars, ones Iruka recognized must have occurred from a bullet crossing No Man’s Land during the War and seizing a mortal man by surprise. The skin and some muscle would have been blown backwards over his jaw, then was gathered up, sewn back, and finally healed, leaving it fragile and warped. 

The captain… was lucky.

Other disabled soldiers had missing noses, holes instead of cheekbones, jaws entirely blown away. Prosthetics had become astonishingly advanced, but Iruka knew from his own scar so prominently displayed – life could be cruel for a returning soldier. The champagne bubbles weren’t for him, for them, for the war veterans and other war survivors. His own drink was dark bourbon whiskey from the bottle and staring up at vast skies full of twinkling stars while sitting alone, very much alone.

Surprising them both, his hand was suddenly on the captain’s face.

The officer brought his head back instinctively, ruffling his silver hair, revealing his face’s left side. There, another scar. This one more like Iruka’s, made from a blade, catching flesh and splitting it. However, his went up and down instead left to right; it interrupted his eyebrow, broke it in two. This eye did not match the other: it was an ocular prosthetic, an artificial eye. It was not meant to be a replacement for the original, which seemed to be absent, but a cosmetic cover, seemingly just for the man’s knowledge himself. Most fascinatingly, Iruka realized as he looked between the two –

_Coppery-red on the left, but grey on the right._

He pulled the captain closer with a strength summoned from pure relief, knowing Naruto was alive. The mere suggestion that he was worth anything – something – any of this – all of this – the idea had made Iruka feel drunk. 

Instead of bourbon whiskey tonight, he had other indulgences in mind.

The other man stumbled in his step, trying to keep from jerking out of Iruka’s grip, but also unwilling to move so close so quick. Joyously, Iruka acted automatically, taking advantage of the error. He maneuvered them until his own back hit the wall. His hand went across the captain’s twisted cheek, the one shot through, not stabbed, so he could touch the loose silver hair by the man’s ear.

It earned him a shiver as sweet as any battlefield victory.

They’d survived war, hadn’t they? Both he and this man? Who cared about scars when this was theirs to enjoy here and now? Finding each other in this, such a mad broken-hearted redemptive world?

Iruka captured the captain in a clinging hold - and kissed him hard. It was obviously both expected and unexpected; the man went as stiff as a board before he soon fell into the kiss, his hands turning desperate and determined. The scars on their faces met, matched, embraced. This was Iruka’s first kiss since the War, and it seemed to be true for the captain, too, who pushed into Iruka achingly.

The man aimed for Iruka’s neck, right above his crumpled white collar, which he kissed with religious-like care. As his cheek nestled into the officer’s soft silver hair, the question flew out of him, glistening and gleeful: “What’s your name?” Iruka explained, sounding and feeling delirious, “I want to say your name.”

With his head ducked down, the captain shook like a leaf in the wind. He moved upwards, so his grey eye could gaze upon Iruka. His red eye did not move, but his entire expression was exposed now, white skin and dark scars and pink blush. He looked like he had found peacetime, precious and much prayed for.

“Kakashi Hatake,” he answered before he smiled, small but sincere, his eye matching by curving. Even the scarred one slightly shifted as well. Radiant in his admiration, the captain bowed his head and once again kissed Iruka’s knuckles. His declaration sounded like a profession of love, one whispered as if they were the only two left in the whole world. “Without knowing it, you’ve kept me alive. I owe you my life.” 

The hint of dark other paths that Kakashi considered sent a dagger into Iruka’s heart, but he privately knew he, too, had looked at the stars and thought of accelerating death. It wasn’t so foreign a concept in the disordered aftermath of war, when men lost purpose and society left them alone.

Still, Iruka didn’t want a servant. He wanted his son and to meet his son’s lover.

Tonight was not what he expected. Looking upon Kakashi Hatake, frightfully scarred, beautifully cast in mourning clothes, obliviously residing in wealth and exuberance – Iruka wanted to know more.

He wanted more.

“Kakashi,” he said once aloud, testing out the name. To Iruka’s trembling delight, the captain took in a sharp breath, shock and wonder swimming through his expression as he stared at Iruka. 

Yes, he wanted more - more of that!

His summer had arrived in such a strange, striking way. There would be France in his near future. A return not for war but for family. In his head wouldn’t be ghosts, nor demons at his back, but… perhaps this man at his side with his mysteries, strength in pursuit, and defenseless shivers at kisses.

“Why don’t you come to France with me?” Iruka asked with a playful smile, caressing the captain’s cheek, and Kakashi’s grey eye glowed like lovely distant lightning. “Let me get to know you?”

Perhaps Kakashi had imagined his journey would end once Iruka was found – that the subject of his search would thank him and rush off to see his son – and he would be left alone once again. Just like Iruka, he’d been forgotten by one of his own. He was also badly scarred. He clearly was also confused what to do outside of battle and bloodshed, preferring a year-long search of a stranger. The party had nothing to do with him, and he had no interest in the party: it was all intended to draw moths to a flame. Anyone so brilliant as Naruto’s description and drawing would surely one day arrive at the mansion… and, while that seemed ludicrous and insane, here Iruka was, wasn’t he?

“Yes,” Kakashi replied, his voice hoarse. “Please.” He swallowed and closed his dissimilar eyes. “Thank you.”

The captain – his neighbor, a stranger, his savior – could not protect himself as Iruka brought up the man’s hand to his mouth, where Iruka kissed his knuckles in promise and hope for something more.


End file.
